A general surgeon from Florida, USA, mistakenly removed the liver instead of the spleen from a 70-year-old patient and caused his death. The patient, originally from Alabama, experienced pain in his lower left abdomen while visiting Florida with his wife. He consulted the general surgeon in a hospital, where tests revealed an abnormal spleen .
When the patient and his wife were reluctant to undergo surgery, the surgeon and the hospital’s Chief Medical officer convinced them to undergo surgery to prevent the development of severe complications. During the laparoscopic splenectomy , the surgeon removed the patient’s liver by transecting the prominent vasculature supplying the liver, which resulted in rapid and fatal blood loss in the patient. Shockingly, the surgeon labeled the wrongly removed liver as the “spleen” and informed the patient’s wife that her husband’s spleen was enlarged…
